Contact bank



Nov. 8, 1949 R. F. STEHLIK CONTACT BANK Filed Sept. 15, 1947 FIG! FIG.3

' INVENTOR.

Rudolph Frank Siehlik ATTORNEY Patented Nov. 8, 1949 I CONTACT BANK Rudolph Frank Stehlik, Antwerp, Belgium, as-

signor to Automatic Electric Laboratories Inc., Chicago, Ill., a corporation of Delaware Application September 15, 1947, Serial No. 773,951

In Great Britain September 25, 1946 1 Claim.

members'being arranged between the rows while.

the bank is bolted between two steel frames, the bolts passing through suitably arranged holes in the spacing members. Where a number of contact rows are provided it will be understood that the thickness of the spacing members must be carefully dimensioned so that proper distance is obtained between the various levels of contacts and such careful dimensioning is one of the most difilcult manufacturing operations in the construction of the bank.

It is the object of the invention to provide arrangements whereby a greater degree of tolerance in the thickness of the spacing members is permissible and the efl'ective over-all thickness is rendered adjustable by the application of pressure to the members without any substantial alteration to the thickness of the material of which they are made.

According to the invention spacing members for use in contact banks are corrugated along their length, the corrugations following the arcuate shape of the members, so as to impart a degree of compressibility to the members without involving any substantial alteration of the thickness of'the material of which they are made. The formation of spacing members in this manner also imparts to them a springiness which facilitates the adjustment ofthe bank to the correct dimensions.

The invention will be better understood from the following description of a contact bank embodying spacing members according to the invention with reference to the accompanying drawings of which:

Fig. 1 shows a cross section of a typical contact bank embodying the invention,

Figs. 2 and 3 show a spacing member according to the invention in plan and cross section respectively.

Referring now to Fig. 1 the contact bank comprises end plates Ebetween which are mounted contact strips C separated by spacing members S and insulated therefrom by insulation members I, the whole being aligned and secured by means of bolts passing through the holes H. In-

The are "shaped form of the members and arrangement of holes H manner in which the corrugation follows the shape of the member is indicated by the dotted lines A--A which correspond to the points AA shown in the cross section of Fig. 3.

When a tension is applied between the end plates E as by securing the bank in a vice the spacing members by reason of their corrugated form are susceptible to compression between the limits of their state as shown in Fig. 1 and the point when the corrugations have been flattened out and the material from which they are made has been'compressed to its limit. Thus the actual spacing between the rows of contacts in the bank is adjustable by varying the tension between the end plates and as a result a greater tolerance is permissible in the thickness of the spacing members and they have a springiness which facilitates the adjustment of the bank to the correct dimensions.

In assembling the contact banks using the spacers according to the invention, a vice is employed and the frames, spacers and contacts are first assembled, next clamped in a vice which is set to a predetermined overall thickness, and the assembly is then bolted together. By this means it is found that a satisfactory contact bank is obtained without the necessity of carefully dimensioning the thickness of the spacers.

I claim:

A contact bank comprising a series of rows of contact elements, having a plurality of contact elements in each row, a pair of strips of insulating material, one on each side of each row, a plurality of metallic spacing elements each corrugated throughout its length, one spacing member inserted between each pair of rows of contacts with one of the strips of insulating material on each side thereof, and means for clamping the elements together into a unit of a desired dimension by flattening the corrugations of each spzpling element as the clamping means is tighten RUDOLPH FRANK STEHLIK.

REFERENCES CITED The following references are of record in the file of this patent:

UNITED STATES PATENTS Great Britain Dec. 9. 1935 is shown in Fig. 2 and the l 

